"God Within... the Yes"
Sister Joan Mitchell
Sunday, December 18th 2005

On this 4th Sunday of Advent the gospel focuses on Mary whose yes to becoming the mother of God is not obedient and passive submission but creative partnership with God.

What do we hear
if we place Mary’s yes as a moment in science’s new creation story?
if we reflect on Mary’s yes as the defining act of an independent woman?
if we relate Mary’s yes to her role as Our Lady of Guadalupe?

13 billion years
after the bang so big
it is still unfurling,
after helium and hydrogen
first partnered to form galaxies,
and stars flared, vanished,
coagulated, rose like bread
in a cosmic oven, expanding;
after the stardust settled
into orbit around suns
in generative gobs like our Earth,
and bacteria hatched
in the ambiotic sea;
after creatures crawled
out of the sea
to eat the grass
and adjust to living with trees
and too much oxygen,
trying wings, trying feet
and standing upright

Within this vast web of life and light
of which we are part and which we see
surrounding us on starry winter nights,
life evolves consciousness,
in our case an inner world within
as limitless as seems
the outer world around us.

We live in the deep yes of the universe that surrounds us
That embodies the creator’s own love and energy
for creating, expanding, unfolding on its own
multiplying diversely, always more complexly,
moving to become all it can be

Mary, like each of us, has within
a deep interior where she can say yes
to our unfolding and partnering in generating life,
each of us a consciousness
In which the cosmos knows itself
Each of us a self who can freely say no or yes

This is the large cosmic context
For the yes we celebrate in the gospel this Sunday
Mary’s yes to the Spirit of God,
Yes, let the impossible come to be in me.

All creation waits suspended between annunciation—
the affirming words, “You are full of grace and gift, God is with you”—
and incarnation, the mystery of God taking flesh to dwell among us as one of us.
This encounter takes place in the solitude of a young girl’s heart
God’s initiative does not override her freedom

“Do not be afraid,” the angel says.
“You will conceive and bear a son and you will name him Jesus.
He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.”
All creation waits in this young girl’s intelligent question
“How can this be? I am a virgin, just a girl. How can I have a baby?
I am betrothed but have had no sexual relations with my fiance or any other man.”

The Spirit will come upon her as the Spirit came upon the waters at creation
The power of the most high will overshadow her.
as God overshadowed Israel in the wilderness
leading the people as a cloud by day and fire by night.
Luke is talking theologically, drawing on the memory of a people
In whose history God has acted before.

Today we usually translate Mary’s word when she says yes,
“Not I am the handmaid, but I am the servant of the Lord;
literally, the word for servant means slave.
The master-slave relationship is not a suitable metaphor for our relationship with God.
Slavery is unjust, destroying human dignity,
demanding rights to a woman’s labor and bodies
Today we might better translate Mary’s yes,
“I am a partner of Holy Mystery unfolding.”

Mary stands alone and independent in this story.
The angel speaks to Mary personally and directly
She takes no counsel with anyone else.
She thinks, questions, and makes a judgment independently.
She is a daughter of earth that has unfolded into consciousness.
Her yes is a self-determining act of personal autonomy. Her yes defines her.
Her yes is faith in this prophetic summons to cocreate with the Holy One.
Mary’s yes to being the mother of God reveals who all of us are
Each of us called to be a mother of God,
To embody the Spirit of God, to give flesh to the holy.

God calls us in the midst of our lives, in the solitude of our hearts
where we stand alone in the midst of our everyday lives
listening attentively for our part in the unfolding cosmic story.

As the pregnant Lady of Guadalupe whose feast we celebrated Monday
Mary calls us to help and protect those without hope.
In 1531, 39 years after Columbus,
Our Lady of Guadalupe appears to Juan Diego, an Indian
whose people the Spanish conquistadors had utterly defeated, silenced.
Mary appears in the colors of the Mayan people at the place of their mother goddess.
She comes not wielding sword but in song and with roses
To stand with, heal, and give worth to this defeated people.
She is the new source and center for these condemned and crucified people

Virgil Elizondo writes, “The final and greatest gift of our Virgin Mother was her miraculous painting on the tilma of Juan Diego. What written word has been for generations of biblical believers, the painted word has been for generations of believers in the new world. The word became flesh of the Americas through Our Lady of Guadalupe and dwells among us truly as one of us.”

Mary calls us to be pregnant with hope
and ready partners in the unfolding mystery of life on Earth.
Mary calls us to say yes to the impossible can come to be in each us.
Yes to standing with the poor of Earth among who Jesus is born.
Yes to Earth itself in whose yes we live.
No to war and yes to song and flowers, healing and holly, faith and fiesta.